Carouselambra
Back in the kitchen…
Harry grabbed a rag from the sink to stuff in his mouth to keep from screaming while he desperately sawed at his arm.
Back and forth…
Back and forth…
Harry’s vision swam as the puddle of his blood grew and the floor was once again going to be stained a dark red.
Back and forth…
Back and…
Harry hit something that caused a spray of bright red blood to shoot upward and that was when his eyes rolled in the back of his head and he hit the floor.
When Harry next opened his eyes, it was with a flood of adrenaline and panic shooting straight through his chest.
Harry tried to sit up and yelled when he couldn’t, something was pressing down on his chest and he couldn’t move his legs.
“Hey, hey, calm down, kid.”
Someone bent over in Harry’s line of sight and Harry continued to struggle when face-to-face with a stranger.
“REMUS!” Harry yelled. “REMUS!”
If Harry was being taken again, it wasn’t without a fight. The tombstone behind Harry’s back was soft and Harry felt straps on his legs instead of ropes.
“Hey, you’re okay.” The stranger was still in Harry’s face. They didn’t look like a death eater, but neither did Moody.
“Do you know where you are?” they asked Harry.
Harry spat at them. They could add another mark on his actually dead body.
“Sedation it is,” the person murmured with a disgusted look.
Harry continued to struggle and shout for Remus, Hermione, Mandy, Ron, anyone until… something slow and warm creeped through Harry’s veins and he could taste metallic in his mouth while everything slowly went dark.
“Jesus! Was this a mugging??”
“Guardian said he did it himself.”
“There’s no way this kid got that deep on his own. Where’s the guardian now?”
“Waiting room, want me to get them?”
Harry tried to open his heavy eyelids when there was a stinging and pulling sensation in his arm.
“Take it off,” Harry slurred with a thick tongue.
One arm was better than the dark mark.
Sirius could never mix Harry up with James or Regulus then… they both had two arms.
“I was the first responder on the scene. I approached the home with Harry Black’s guardian, Sirius Black, and when no one answered the door, Sirius gave me permission to enter the property.”
“So you had the guardian with you? There was no way that they assisted him?”
“No, sir. The guardian’s a regular at the bar on fourteenth. The bartender swears he was there all night until I arrived to drive him home.”
“And he’s saying, what? This kid went clear to the bone on his own?”
“I couldn’t tell you. He said that, sorry for the language, but for clarities sake: ‘if he’s stupid enough to try and cut the bloody mark off with a knife, they can keep him until Remus gets back’.”
“Who is Remus??”
“His other uncle? Maybe?”
“Jesus Christ.”
Harry had been drifting in and out of consciousness for what felt like an eternity. He heard a snippet of conversation here and there, nothing he could recall until he thought hard about it. But eventually Harry began to stir in what he hoped was genuine consciousness.
When Harry blinked, he could feel the dryness in his eyes from his contacts. Harry tried to reach up with his hands to scrub his face, but found that his wrists were tied to a bed rail with soft white restraints.
“What…?”
“Oh, good, you’re awake.”
Harry stopped pulling on the restraints and peered at the person who was sitting beside his bed. It was a woman, probably around Remus’ age, with short cropped hair and a navy blue uniform on.
“Hello.” The woman smiled at Harry and he was too confused to even think to smile back.
Harry began looking around the room and realized where he was while the woman explained.
“You’re at U of C Hospital,” she said. “Do you remember what happened?”
Harry shook his head while he absently continued trying to free his hands from the restraints.
“You hurt yourself quite badly,” the woman said. “Can you tell me why you did that?”
Harry looked down at that and slowly began to realize what happened. When Harry looked at his left arm and saw that it was in one piece, whole and covered in a bandage, he let out a miserable howl.
“Why didn’t you cut it off?” Harry cried. “Take! The! Bloody! Arm! Off!!”
Harry managed to yank hard enough on the restraints to break the bed rail and free his left arm. While the woman screamed for assistance, Harry quickly unwound the bandages on the arm and started picking at the thick, black, string that was holding his skin together.
Someone burst in the room with a needle drawn as Harry pulled and pulled, hoping to unravel it all until the arm fell off.
Then everything went black again.
The next time Harry woke up, he wasn’t restrained and there were two blokes in the new room Harry was in. The blokes wore light pink uniforms and began speaking to Harry in very soft and quiet voices that made his skin itch.
Harry looked around the relatively empty room before looking down at himself. His left arm was in a hard cast and Harry himself was dressed in a floral green hospital gown.
“Where am I?” Harry asked nervously. It didn’t look like a hospital anymore. There was no door to Harry’s room or wires connecting to his bed.
One of the blokes gave Harry a very pitying look that had Harry feeling immediately defensive.
“This is the psychiatric unit,” the bloke said softly. “We’re going to get you help. Okay, Harry?”
Harry had to work very hard to keep from letting the hysterical bubble of laughter building in his chest to keep from escaping him. Mandy had told Harry what would happen if he tried to cut his arm off, she was going to be so smug about it.
The only upside was that Harry felt his brain working normally - or as normal as Harry could rationally explain it being, except his brain was the organ they decided if he was rational so if he wasn’t rational would he even know it? - and Harry didn’t feel as terrible as he had before he tried to remove his arm.
“Excellent,” Harry said, working very hard to stay calm and not sound entirely mental. “May I, please, call my guardian?”
And by guardian, Harry absolutely meant Remus. It was Sirius’ damn fault Harry was there to start with. He could have made up any story in the world, or even just obliviated Tony when he brought him home, and then healed Harry himself. Instead, Harry vaguely remembered the woman from before explaining that Sirius signed him in the hospital and just left him there.
Prat.
Harry was given a phone to use under supervision, but Harry didn’t know any number to reach Remus at. In fact, Harry only had one phone number memorized.
Lip was still an arse for what he said about Mandy, but Harry might consider forgiving him if he could get Remus to take Harry home.
A psychiatric unit of a hospital was actually much more unsettling than Harry thought Mandy made it sound. And apparently Harry was on the juvenile wing, which meant he assumed the adult wing was much worse.
There were twelve rooms, six rooms on either side of a large ‘common area’. None of the rooms had doors which meant that Harry could see inside the room while a kid cried and rocked himself on the floor. One room smelled like actual shit, one bloke refused to put a gown on. In another room, a girl seemed to be screaming in Spanish while… masturbating…
Harry quickly looked away from that room and focused on the card game he was playing with one of the nurses. The patients were all meant to be in bed, but Harry couldn’t sleep and nobody seemed inclined to force him. Harry was scheduled to meet with the mind doctor the next morning to explain why he tried to remove his arm. Hopefully, Remus would have Harry out of there before that happened.
It would be a bit difficult to not sound insane if not…
‘No, sir, I’m not crazy. It’s just that I was kidnapped and a dark wizard branded me with this mark. I know it looks like a normal tattoo, but it burns almost constantly and I can’t sleep. So you completely understand why I tried to remove it, right?’
Harry snorted in amusement at the thought and the nurse he was playing cards with smiled at him.
“Does a snort mean that you do have a five?” she asked.
Harry shook his head, “Go fish.”
It was a daft game, but it was either play cards or use a box of greasy looking coloring crayons to draw with. And considering the other patients and their… lack of proper hygiene… Harry didn’t quite trust those crayons.
Harry was on his way to winning a new game against the nurse, who said her name was Fay. All Harry needed to do was discard the blue seven in his hand and he’d win Uno.
Fay was good company while Harry evaded sleep and waited for Remus. She was friendly and kind, probably part of her job, and talked to Harry about movies she liked. They sounded like kid movies, but Harry found himself chatting about the horror films he watched with Dudley and didn’t mention his personal theory that Stephen King was a squib who incorporated magic in all his films out of magic-envy.
Pennywise was absolutely a rip off of a boggart and there was no way that Carrie wasn’t an obscurial.
Even without mentioning his thoughts, Harry was still doing fine. Fay kept playing different card games with Harry and giving him little juice boxes and snacks while the other nurses dealt with the actually crazy patients.
Around three, Harry began to feel anxious and kept tapping his nails on the table while he looked at the clock.
“Everything okay?” Fay asked him calmly.
“I tried to call Remus, the guardian I’m not angry with,” he clarified, “nearly five hours ago…”
And even if Remus had gone to the store or something while Tony called an ambulance and Sirius left Harry in the hospital… surely he’d be back by then.
Remus rarely even stepped out back to smoke without telling Harry. It wasn’t like him to be gone.
Or did he get home and Sirius made up some nonsense about Harry staying with Mandy?
No… even if Lip and Harry were having a row, Harry didn’t think that Lip would just leave Harry in a hospital.
…maybe.
It was only twenty minutes later that an ear-piercing sound ripped through the ward, waking the patients that had been asleep, and starting a horrible and positively insane riot.
“Fire alarm,” Fay said loudly and calmly. She stood up, leading Harry to stand as well, and began ushering him toward the locked doors of the unit.
“Wait here,” she said.
Harry watched with a bewildered expression as the other nurses started grabbing wheelchairs and carrying patients to them while Fay sent all the ones that were able to walk to line up behind Harry.
It would be the most ridiculous thing to ever happen to Harry if he burned up in a muggle hospital fire because the other psych patients were moving too slowly.
There were seven of them lined up and able to walk that Fay began leading down a set of emergency stairs. Fay kept up a steady stream of reassuring comments that did very little to actually reassure Harry.
Harry was silently plotting the most heinous revenge on Sirius that he could imagine. If Sirius clearly had no rule book on living together peacefully, then Harry wouldn’t use one either.
The best plan was a mixture between having Hermione find a way to send Sirius’ bike to Harry so he could blow it up or finding a way to leave Sirius in a much further country than Canada.
Harry was seriously considering both options when he passed a landing and was yanked backwards through a door by the collar of his gown.
“Oi!” Harry spun around and saw that Ian was the one to grab him. Mandy quickly kicked the door shut and grabbed Harry’s hand.
“Run,” Mandy said.
Harry wasn’t sure what was going on, but he started running down a hallway with Mandy and Ian. Mandy led them around so many twists and turns, shoving through patients and workers trying to leave the building.
They went through what seemed like a service door that was propped open with a little screwdriver and then began flying down the staircase.
“Lip’s out here,” Ian said when they reached the bottom floor. “C’mon, hurry.”
Mandy was yanking Harry by his hand so hard that Harry couldn’t do anything except hurry. They went through another door that had a broken handle and was smoking oddly, and Harry could have cheered when he saw Lip standing outside a black car with a cigarette in his mouth.
“Bloody hell.” Harry was panting when he slid in the backseat with Mandy, letting Ian take the passenger seat. “What was that?!”
“Jailbreak,” Lip said. He slammed his door shut and then peeled the car around in a circle so quick that Harry swore they went up on two wheels.
Harry had so many questions. The most important became obvious when Lip hit the main road and began flying away from the hospital.
“Guys…” Harry peered put the window and was rather alarmed to see that the main entrance of the hospital was actually on fire. There were fire trucks blocking Harry’s view of the fire, but the thick smoke was unmissable.
“You didn’t catch a hospital full of sick people on fire, right?” Harry asked them all.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Mandy said. She was still holding Harry’s right hand while she looked at his casted left arm curiously. “We didn’t catch the hospital on fire.”
Harry let out—
“We caught a car on fire and pushed it through the doors.”
Harry was still laughing at the misadventures of his friends (and if Lip stole a car, picked up Mandy, and committed arson for Harry then Harry could consider him a friend again) when they pulled up to drop Mandy off at her house.
Apparently breaking Harry out of the psychiatric unit involved Mandy seducing a guard to get a key, Lip having to take apart a door handle that needed a card to bypass, and Ian posing as a nurse at one point to get through another door.
“Try not to do anything stupid for a few days?” Mandy asked Harry before leaving the car.
“I’ll try,” Harry quipped. He was grinning when Mandy scoffed and then kissed him hard.
The great thing about Mandy was that she was barely even smug about Harry ending up exactly where she said he would.
“I’ll come by later,” Mandy promised. “Fuck school.”
Harry nodded in vehement agreement.
Fuck school.
Lip spent the short drive to their houses taking the mickey out of Harry.
Apparently there had been a zero percent chance of Harry being able to cut through the bone of his arm with a kitchen knife.
“So I’ll use a saw next,” Harry said, unconcerned. After getting some sleep, Harry could plan his next move much more effectively.
And if that involved an electric saw, so be it. As long as it also involved Sirius staying far away from Harry for as long as it took to remove the arm and heal the wound.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Ian laughed. If he thought Harry was kidding then it was only because he didn’t understand how sick of the pain Harry was. His left arm was still completely numb and felt detached from his body, but once the drugs wore off Harry knew it would go back to burning.
Lip must have known that Harry was entirely serious because he suggested Harry stay at their place. Harry only agreed after looking in his house and not seeing Remus anywhere.
Sirius was asleep in his bed and Harry resisted the horrible urge to light him on fire.
Everyone in the Gallagher house was asleep so the three boys crept silently up the stairs to Ian and Lip’s bedroom. Lip tossed Harry a pair of shorts to pull on and Harry was fine sleeping in just the shorts.
Being broken out of a hospital had been exhausting and with Harry’s arm still numbed, Harry was asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow Ian gave him.
Debbie tried to wake them up only a few hours later when she said it was time for school and Lip threw something at her head and told her they were skipping. Fiona was in there next and Harry actually covered his ears with his blanket to try and block her out while Ian sleepily explained that they had only been asleep for a few short hours.
Harry thought that was the end of it when Fiona said they could skip as long as they explained themselves later.
“Not it,” Lip murmured after Fiona flipped the light back off.
“He who was admitted to a psych ward is he who explains it to Fi,” Ian added.
“Shut up,” Harry groaned. He rolled on his side and got comfortable again. “‘M sleeping.”
Harry was able to fall back asleep… only to be woken again just a couple of hours later by someone he couldn’t just ignore.
“Harry James Potter.”
Harry rolled over and stared blearily at the person in the doorway until he realized it was Remus. Then Harry sat up quickly and fixed him with a scowl to match the one on Remus’ face.
“What the hell did you do?” Remus asked, looking at the cast on Harry’s arm.
“I tried to cut it off,” Harry said simply. “Where the hell have you been? D’you know how worried I was?”
“I’m gone for forty-eight hours and you try to remove your arm?!” Remus asked.
“Obviously!” Harry cried, waking the other boys. “Sirius had me committed! They had to break me out!”
Harry swore that he actually saw a grey hair appear on Remus’ head.
Honestly, Harry thought that Remus knew he was the only responsible one in their household. It wasn’t Harry’s fault that he chose the worst possible time to go on a little holiday.
Though, when they got home and shared their last two days with each other, Harry could admit that Remus wasn’t exactly on holiday.
*****
A Few Hours Before Harry Cut His Arm…
Remus had been tearing through every book in his rather expansive trunk of books that he owned. There had to be a way to remove the mark from Harry’s arm or to sever its connection to Voldemort.
Just because Severus didn’t know of one didn’t mean it didn’t exist. Severus wasn’t an expert solely because he had a mark. Even if Albus accepted Severus at his word, Remus couldn’t shake the idea that Severus didn’t seem entirely bothered by Harry being tormented constantly.
The miserable bastard probably missed being the one to do it.
Remus was flipping through a promising book that he had taken from Grimmauld Place when he was interrupted by an incessant tapping sound. Harry was at school… Sirius was celebrating his recent exoneration…
Remus looked around with mild concern until he realized the noise was coming from his bedroom window. When Remus raised the blinds, he was startled to see a little brown owl.
A very familiar little owl that sent a wave of icy cold fear down Remus’ back.
Remus fumbled as he tried to untie the parchment from the owl and he didn’t even think to offer the bird a drink as he quickly unrolled the scroll.
If Nymphadora was writing to Remus, it was bad news. She knew that he was with Harry and that Harry’s location was meant to be kept completely secret. Nymphadora was one of the Order, she wouldn’t subvert the rules for anything less than life or death.
R,
Come quick.
-T
Helpful.
Remus was entirely too consumed by fear for Nymphadora to do much more than leave a quick note for Harry to find on the table. He only said there was an emergency and to not do anything stupid while he was gone. It was unaddressed, but it was meant for both Harry and Sirius.
After that, Remus left the house with only his wand and the clothes on his back as he began the series of apparitions it would take to reach Nymphadora.
The entire trip was filled with images of the worst… Nymphadora could be hurt, or perhaps it was another member of the Order… Voldemort could have escaped his imprisonment or the Wizengamot could be calling for Harry to testify…
Nymphadora’s news was much worse than almost anything else Remus imagined.
“Pregnant.”
Remus stood in Nymphadora’s studio flat and stared at her in absolute shock. She stood across from him with her and crossed and her chin raised.
Remus raced across the earth to get there only to find out… find out…
Pregnant.
“It’s mine?” Remus asked.
“It’s yours or Fleur Delacour’s and I’m thinking you’re a more likely candidate,” Nymphadora said confidently.
Even if a small part of Remus was both amused and intrigued by the image of Nymphadora finally marking ‘Veela’ off her ‘fuck-them’ list, he couldn’t appreciate it in the moment.
“Pregnant,” Remus breathed again, in absolute horror.
Remus would almost prefer to be told that Albus had been assassinated.
Remus couldn’t remove his eyes from Nymphadora’s abdomen even while he backed up to sink down on her sofa. There were very few things that Remus was entirely confident of, but his absolute lack of interest in ever reproducing or passing his werewolf genetics on to a child was a definite.
“You look like you’re going to hurl,” Nymphadora said, not sympathetically at all. “Try and keep it off the rug, it’s an heirloom.”
“Do you think this is funny?” Remus asked. He tried to do the mental math and shook his head. “How far along are you?”
“About six weeks,” Nymphadora said. She grinned when Remus looked from her stomach to her face. “It’s not funny, but the green color your face is turning kind of is.”
“You said you were on the potion!” Remus yelled as he jumped to his feet to begin pacing. “You swore it!”
Nymphadora made Remus submit to a diagnostic charm to check for STDs, Remus made her swear she was on the potion. It was the entire basis of their relationship- sex that was trust-filled enough to be quite experimental and excellent.
“Oh, I’m sorry Mister ‘my cock’s too big for the condoms’, but we both know the potion isn’t foolproof,” Nymphadora snarled.
Remus scoffed as he continued to pace. It was hardly his fault that the condoms Nymphadora had on hand were made for smaller men. Remus had put his trust in a damned potion that failed him in the worst way a potion could fail him.
“I don’t know what to do.” Remus gripped his hair tightly. He already had Harry he had to take care of. Remus couldn’t leave him in Chicago with Sirius and Remus highly doubted if Nymphadora would move there.
“You’re joking, right?” Nymphadora asked. “Remus, I think it’s pretty clear what we do now.”
Remus stopped and looked over at her.
Nymphadora smiled sweetly. “We get married.”
Remus’ heart sank and he truly felt as if he would be sick in that moment. In addition to not wanting to roll the dice with his genetics, Remus also couldn’t imagine committing himself to another person.
Not in a way where he planned to stay loyal.
Monogamy was a synonym for death, he just knew it.
While Remus was trying to think of the nicest possible way to turn down Nymphadora’s offer, she burst out in loud laughter. The twit actually bent over at the waist as she laughed. She looked up at Remus at one point and then started another round of obnoxious laughter.
“Your face!” she howled. “Oh, Merlin. I wish you could see your face… hold on…”
Remus was wholly unamused when Nymphadora shifted to mirror Remus, though with wide eyes and a vaguely green tint to his pale face.
“Remus, I’m getting an abortion,” Nymphadora said after shifting back to her usual appearance. “It’s just bloody expensive and since I’m not the one with the cock…”
“Oh thank god.” Remus could have hit his knees and wept he was so grateful. When Nymphadora said she was pregnant, Remus desperately wanted to suggest an abortion. Unfortunately, most witches and wizards were so adamantly against abortion that it wasn’t even a commonly offered practice within the magical world.
Remus just assumed that Nymphadora would fall within the group of people who thought it was some ridiculous duty of a woman to bear fruit in the form of screaming infants.
“How much do you need?” Remus asked Nymphadora. Remus had an account at Lloyd’s that his payments from the Sabini Gang were deposited in when he occasionally picked up a job. It wasn’t much, a few thousand pounds last he checked, but Mac would have tossed something in for Remus after Remus saw in the news that their bank robbery had gone off without a hitch.
“Eight hundred pounds and… and someone to go with me?” Nymphadora, Remus’ stubborn and strong witch, looked so suddenly small that Remus crossed the room quickly to pull her against him in a tight embrace.
“Of course I’ll go with you,” Remus said softly. It would be a difficult appointment even if Nymphadora made the decision herself quite easily.
Remus was certain that Harry and Sirius could manage without him for a short time. Nymphadora took immediate precedence.
Not only did Remus want to be absolutely certain that the procedure was done without any complications, he also found that he hated the idea of Nymphadora going through it alone.
The two of them spent the night in Nymphadora’s bed together. Remus went and withdrew the money they needed and picked up takeout for dinner. They shared the food and Nymphadora laughed when Remus clumsily tried to use chopsticks.
It was still too quiet as they laid together. Remus held Nymphadora with her back to his chest and he could tell she wasn’t sleeping.
“Remus?”
“Hm?”
“This is the right choice, right?” Nymphadora asked quietly.
Remus pressed an affectionate kiss to the back of her head and tried to choose his words with extreme care.
“This is my preference, yes,” he said. “If you’re unsure…”
“No, I’m sure,” she whispered back. “I just… I think I feel guilty. That’s daft, right? It’s not even a person yet.”
“Feelings are never daft,” Remus assured her. “I- do you need more time to think?”
Remus very desperately hoped she didn’t. Remus didn’t want to pressure her one way or another, but Remus had zero interest in a child that wasn’t the teenage boy he left back in Chicago.
“No, I don’t,” Nymphadora said. “I’m going to blame the unwanted hormones.”
Remus chuckled, as he was certain that Nymphadora was trying to make a joke to keep from sounding vulnerable.
“You know… when there was a lot of shops being busted for bad ingredients, I started paying Severus to make my potions… You don’t think..?”
Remus wanted to say no that it was an absurd worry to have… but Severus was a petty son of a bitch and it wasn’t a secret that Remus and Nymphadora got together when they were all in Grimmauld Place.
“If so, I’ll kill him,” Remus swore, meaning it.
Nymphadora was grinning, Remus could tell from her tone.
“We’ll do it together. Abortion as a first date, murder as a second.”
Remus nuzzled his nose in Nymphadora’s pink hair and smiled to himself.
“Perfect,” he said.
It was still a long and sleepless night, but the two of them traveled downtown together, hand-in-hand, the next morning.
Remus stayed with Nymphadora as long as he was able to. Physically, she was fine. The procedure had been flawlessly performed in a surprisingly quick and efficient manner.
Emotionally… Remus was concerned that Nymphadora’s hair had been a dull blonde since they returned to her flat afterward.
“Go,” Nymphadora said that night. She was wrapped in a blanket on her bed and Remus had made her dinner, given her hot chocolate, fetched a pain potion for her discomfort, and was unsure what else to do.
“Come with me,” Remus said impulsively. “Please, Dora? I hate leaving you here alone.”
Nymphadora flashed Remus a weak smile.
“I’m not depressed, I’m a bit sad,” she said. “You should get back to Harry though because I’m going to make my mum come coddle me and you don’t want to be here for that.”
No, Remus didn’t.
Remus still felt torn when he left. If Sirius and Harry hadn’t gotten into a fist fight just two nights previously, he might have stayed. But Harry was in pain, Sirius was a muppet, and Andromeda Tonks could take just as good care of Nymphadora as Remus could.
“I adore you,” Remus told Nymphadora before leaving. He bent down and gave her a hug that he tried to put as much gratitude in as possible.
“You should, I’m quite brilliant,” Nymphadora said with a hint of her usual humor. “Go on, tell my cousin he’s welcome for the freedom. I was the one who summoned all the rats in Malfoy Manor until I found Pettigrew.”
“I’ll be sure to inform Sirius that he owes his freedom to you,” Remus said. He wanted to say something to wash away the little hint of sorrow in Nymphadora’s eyes, but that had never been his role before.
Remus had never put that look in her eyes before either though.
It was odd. Remus didn’t even consider what a child born between himself and Nymphadora would be like until he began apparating toward the States.
Would it have carried Remus’ disease? Cursed to change every full moon? Would it have had Nymphadora’s gift? The ability to change its appearance at will?
If it had been a boy, would Nymphadora accept ‘James’ as a middle name? In honor of both Remus’ truest friend and the child he already cared for as if his own?
If it was a girl, would Remus have teasingly insisted on passing along Nymphadora’s name until she was red in the face?
Remus would never know, which was for the best, but he doubted if it would be the last time he thought about it.
Of course, he could hardly think of a hypothetical child that he had no interest in having when the two idiots that lived in his home were unable to be unsupervised for even two days.
Only Harry would do something as reckless as trying to cut off his arm and only Sirius would do something as neglectful as leaving Harry in a muggle hospital to be committed.
It was absolutely for the best that Remus didn’t add a third infant to his life when the other two were incapable of rational thought.